Our roundup of the "need-to-know" developments in digital marketing and technology

The main development across the major digital marketing platforms in July was the upgrading of Google AdWords to Enhanced campaigns and adding Promotional tabs in Gmail. There were also significant developments of analytics tools for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google this month. So, in our five categories this month we focus on advice to improve marketing effectiveness.

Strategy and planning

Are you ready for Marketing 2020 Steven Van Belleghem asks how we should be preparing now for future shifts in marketing.

Here’s a summary of his ideas:

The top 10 most useful digital marketing statistics sources? In July we released a new compilation of 50+ trends available for Expert members to include in their business case presentations. But many of the best stats are freely…

Ideas, examples and a process to develop your online value proposition (OVP)

I’m really pleased that Jay Baer of Convince and Convert could speak recently in our webcast. He explained three blueprints and examples of how companies can develop their Youtility.  Jay is one of the great original thinkers who shows how to apply social media and content marketing to get business results. Dan and I have been following his ideas from his blog for a couple of years now. The talk and slide deck are now available

Youtility talk

Youtility slide deck

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Ideas to keep your marketing aligned with future customer expectations

For many companies, 2020 acts as a symbolic deadline, with many strategic plans working towards that date. Everyone is convinced that the face of marketing and entrepreneurship will have changed profoundly by the time 2020 rolls around. Based on my discussions with experts, literature and my personal vision and experiences with customers, I have compiled an overview of what marketing 2020 might look like. Get ready for Marketing 2020 from steven van belleghem This blog post summarizes the main elements of the presentation.

The 2020 Consumer

To develop the marketing philosophy of the future we also need to understand the 2020 consumer. Three factors will continue to influence consumer behavior: 1. Full adoption of new technologies:…

What are the most common, most heinous online marketing mistakes?

More people are doing marketing badly according to Seth Godin’s recent post.

It got me thinking that with the Content Marketing Avalanche, more people are now also doing online marketing badly. It’s inevitable with the need to reach customers across more and more touchpoints across paid, owned and earned media. So what are the most common mistakes. Here are 10 I see all the time, from more strategic to practical, in the economic, inimitable Godin style… Not having a strategy for digital channels - here’s 10 reasons you do. Not setting goals, not measuring or optimising site performance . Thinking that online success is about following the latest shiny marketing tools like Vine or Instagram video when it’s all about building a brand online. Creating product-centred, not…

Search and social media marketing advice for travel marketing

It’s not an uncommon process for a firm at start-up level to take their passion for a product or a service and jump head first into an enterprise that can very easily run away, become unsustainable and ultimately fail. The advent of the online option for travellers to purchase was a great leveller in the travel industry. Distribution was not limited to high street chains as independents could conceivable set up a shop window with 24-hour visibility, seven days a week. Several years later, the big names have flexed their financial muscle in an attempt to dominate the online channel but I’m a firm believer (and more a fan of David than Goliath) that there is enough for the little guy (and gal) to make a nice living. This post is not intended to be a review of business models, simply a guide with some…

Impact and usage of Tripadvisor for companies marketing in the tourism sector

MediaMosaic have compiled a useful Infographic on Tripadvisor, collated from  sources including Comscore, Tripadvisor and Forbes to provide insight into marketing travel destinations. As the tourism industry is growing, WWTC forecasts that by 2023 it will be worth 10% of global GDP and creates 115 bn for the UK economy each year - it's still a growing sector. Marketers working in tourism are seizing the opportunity to use Tripadvisor to promote their services, holiday destinations, accommodation, attractions flights  and restaurants to name afew. Tripadvisor connects with a large audience; content is viewed by 300m people monthly across other sites,  has more than 20m registered members and 60m reviews. We feel that Mediamosaic's Infographic is a great resource to show…

Content planning made easy

Over the past 18 months to two years it seems there has been ever-increasing volume of advice on content marketing. You would have to have been on a very long holiday or living under a rock to not notice how content marketing is a huge topic and an industry worth $44 billion and that's just in the United States. While there are many posts exhorting us to "create awesome content" there is a big practical challenge of how you plan and resource this content creation. One specific problem many of us face is how to encourage other specialists in our companies to create content which we have covered in this post based on a discussion on persuading others in your company to create content for you. I wanted to add to this by reviewing the issue of when you're face with a blank piece of paper…..what content…

7 low or no-cost marketing techniques for startups without funding

Whilst many big name startups do receive funding, they're the exception. The startup I co-founded has never raised a penny in external funding, so in this post I share some of the low or no-cost marketing techniques we used when launching MyCurrencyTransfer.com and MyTravelMoney.co.uk. We completely "bootstrapped" our comparison business, but using some of the methods I describe here we’re now helping over 120,000 visitors per month find a fairer and cheaper deal on foreign exchange. Yes, it was exhausting in the early years. Yes, the pace of growth was infuriating at times. But would Stevan (my co-founder) and I have done it any other way? Absolutely not! In this article, we’ll share some of our startup ‘war stories’ and show you how you can also market your startup on a shoestring.

1. Build…

Review the quality of your audience segments with this checklist

This blog post first appeared in the Arts Marketing Association’s, Journal of Arts Marketing, and we are now sharing it with Smartinsight's readers. For more free resources, case studies, research and toolkits to promote art, culture and heritage visit culturalhive website. 

In an ideal world we would treat everyone as an individual and tailor and promote our offer accordingly. But this is impractical. Treating everyone as an homogenous mass however is ineffective - one size does not fit all. Segmentation provides us with a happy medium.

Segmentation is a fantastic way of reaching different people with different messages and can vastly improve how you cater for people. It means you can be strategic about audience growth and development of audience relationships.

Get it right and segmentation should provide true market insight that will lead to tangible results in audience development,…

Mobile traffic up to 15 per cent of global internet traffic in May 2013 – up from 10 per cent in May 2012, and six per cent in May 2011.

Value/Importance: [rating=5] Recommended link: KPCB Internet Trends You may well have seen the reports from Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB who typically releases annual surveys at the turn of the year.  In May she updated her 2013 findings, so we thought we would alert you to this latest report. KPCB Internet Trends 2013 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers We see these as some of key highlights from her report: Growth in shared and created digital content, from documents to pictures, tweets and…